food prices

FOOD PRICES

The consensus seems to be that after the Midwest flooding, scarcity and ginormous food price increases are assured. Well, probably. But most likely isn't assuredly. While we are used to being double dog dingus'ed, it isn't guaranteed. First off, just because the weather is terrible does NOT mean food prices will go up enough to actually endanger anyone. Go back thirty and forty years and most likely what you will see is PETROLEUM rather than Mother Nature induced price spikes. Not always, but most often in this country, 'Murica, oil causes inflation and scarcity. Why?

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Because Oil To Food is at least a century old here. We are spoiled rotten by oil based food and its insanely low cost. Add in extra money from oil wages ( we supervise oil based machines doing our work ) and at no time is history has food ever been this dirt cheap. Ever never. Which makes it a little embarrassing we don't have more food storage ( even me ). In those few short periods that oil wasn't dirt cheap, we noticed that food prices crept towards Historical Norm. It scared us, and it should have. And I don't mean to say that food is expensive to produce. It isn't.

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What is expensive is keeping other people/preditors away from our food. Chickens and grazing animals and plants, they do all the work as long as you do your part adding more to the soil than you take out. Your main job as a farmer is keeping eaters away from your crops and animals, and paying someone else to protect your crops from human eaters. That is why most survivalists spend all their money on guns and very little on food. Protection of food is expensive. Food itself is cheap.

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When BUYING food gets expensive it is because we are paying a premium to the food protectors. The government with guns ( taxes ) or the third parties demanding a toll ( bankers ). It isn't because the food itself has much input cost. So, the Oil To Food was just a racket, by third parties, extorting money. Most times, the extortionists live in splendor by getting paid in quantity rather than quality, per person. Sometimes that dynamic falters and the food appears costly. But that is the protection racket breaking down. Transporting food is part of the racket.

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Historically, small cities were surrounded by farmland. The Lord On High charged a pretty penny and could, because protecting the food against OTHER lords was cheaper than being attacked and slaughtered. There was no transportation cost, because except over water transportation is VERY costly. Mostly, because of protection. Even sea transportation needs a navy, so it was much cheaper but never free. The best way to transport is to NOT need transport. The Oil Age provided the first truly cheap transportation. So for the first time you could free ALL cities of surrounding cropland.

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Which we did, and replaced it with suburbs. Because city workers living in the city taking public transportation are not very profitable. But put them in suburbs and the bankers love them, long time. Even subsidizing gasoline, it was VERY profitable. Notice how almost never was gas too expensive. There might have been supply disruptions, but near free fuel is given to the public so the gov and bankers profit over everything else. That cheap oil translated over into cheap food prices. Why are restaurant food prices so unreasonable right now? It isn't because of food prices. The two trend lines have been the opposite the last five to eight years.

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What you have been paying for is the protection racket. The banker induced 2008 economic collapse, which ONLY profited the bankers, is now responsible for insane rents, surging unemployment, out of control mergers and stock manipulations. You aren't paying more for the food but to bail out the bankers ( to keep their derivatives casino from crashing again ). I feel a surge of pride when I do NOT eat out. Not just because I'm getting a merit badge is Super Extreme Frugality, but because I'm not helping the whoring rotten bankers get more money.

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Do you think McDonald's is replacing workers with robots because they want $15 an hour? NYET! McDonald's can't afford workers at current wages, because of the banker racket costs. Rents, way up ( or, if the property is owned, property taxes way up so the local government can pay its banker loans they took to survive 2008 ). Customers, way down ( or, not increasing. If a business takes loans with growth assumed, just lack of growth equals losing money ). Because customers lose hours to ObamaCare, having less disposable income.

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Again, food costs adjusted for inflation have been going DOWN as restaurant prices have been going UP. Granted, food prices can reverse course and head up. They probably will. But the last time we had a huge weather event, there was actually plenty of press showing how little this impacted food prices. A loaf of bread went from $2.79 to $2.99, say. Because you were not paying all that much for the wheat, as much as for everything else. You're telling me that a 20% surge in food is going to impact you all that much, as cheap as food is right now?

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'Po Bitches in Turd World countries that directly eat off basic food stocks, such as a peasant buying corn kernels to make her own tortilla's, yes, she and her family is screwed. But American's? If you buy processed foods, the food part is cheap even at a 20-50% food price hike. The bank rising interest rates, or oil prices doubling have far more impact on the retail price. Do oil prices carry through the supply chain? Of course! But you only notice when that price doubles or triples. And don't forget, prices are NOT always free to rise!

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Eventually, yes, you'll see a fuel surcharge after lots of oil price increases. But to start, FedEx and UPS competing against each other and the Post Office keep them from raising prices. Oh, someone always pays. The taxpayer, someone losing a job, a stockholder. But the end customer doesn't ALWAYS pay for increased costs. “A virtual monopoly” isn't the same as an “absolute monopoly”. All this is to say, it is simplistic to look at weather related food lose as being an automatic price increase. And we didn't even cover food transportation from other regions. Which I might do tomorrow.

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But I'll definitely cover the whole point this article was about, sans background, which is that even IF food prices go up after flooding, should you discount the possibility of government subsidized food? “Food is a weapon” can also include the wielder allowing it to be sold at a loss. Like the first drug hit being free, the government might not be through with controlling us with cheap food. They could “eat” a lot of the increases, for their own benefit. They subsidize oil and entertainment ( taxpayer supported professional sports ). Why not food? Continued tomorrow.

( .Y. )

( today's related Amazon link click here )

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note: free for today books.  Barnyard Flu here. 
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note: if you don't read the comments, thinking you have a real life outside my writing, a loyal minion suggested the movie "Battletruck" which is better known as "Warlords Of The 21st Century".  Look for either on ScrewTube, or I watched it ( under "Warlords" ) on Tubi.  Was it a great movie, even by the standards of the 1980's?  Not really.  Was it a great movie compared to almost any other Desert Wasteland After The Oil Age movie?  Hell to the yeah.  It actually tried to envision how life was going to be lived then, and tried to show as much in background detail.  Not realistic per se, with the Forever Ammo and other points, but it tries much harder than most.  The producers actually valued story and other production values.  I enjoyed and recommend. 
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